


i know (i'm no superman)

by iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid



Category: Shazam! (2019)
Genre: Angst, Billy Batson Needs a Hug, Brothers, Brothers Being SOFT, Drowning Mention, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, In This House We DEAL With Our Traumas Right Kids???, Late Night Conversations, Mentions of Other DC Heroes, Nightmares, Yes The Title Is The Scrubs Theme WHAT OF IT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-06 15:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18391217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid/pseuds/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid
Summary: “It was just… It was stupid.”“Not that stupid,” Freddy says with a shrug. “Nightmares suck, I know how it is.”(Or, fighting ten-foot-tall horror movie monsters and a dude with a glowing eye who's got no qualms attacking a bunch of kids is… Well, it's just a lot for a fourteen-year-old to deal with.)





	i know (i'm no superman)

**Author's Note:**

> so um?? the boys did not hug??? in the movie??? not once???
> 
> (also - is anyone surprised that i was introduced to a new piece of media and immediately made a "character gets comforted after a nightmare" fic? hmm? no? yes i'm predictible no i will never change, my mark on ao3 will forever be that each fandom i join ends up with a fluffy little h/c oneshot and you know what? i'm okay with that)
> 
>  **tw** for description of drowning, but other than that this should be a safe fluffy read, enjoy!

 

He can’t breathe.

Every time he tries to get some air, it’s just — it’s a solid lump that gets lodged in his throat and  _bursts_ into a million little shards, and rivers of ice spread through every inch of his lungs and there’s water soaked into his jacket and dripping down his neck and everything is so _cold_ —

_Shazam —_

It doesn’t work, it doesn’t _work,_ he can’t say the stupid word if he can’t _breathe._

_Shazam! Shazam! Come on!_

He needs to say it, he _has_ to, or — or Mary and Pedro and Freddy and all the rest of them — no, no, no, _no,_ he can’t let another one of them get hurt, not because of him —

_Shazam!_

And he thinks he might be crying now, but he _can’t,_ he can’t waste the air, can’t breathe in at the wrong time or he’s _really_ screwed, and —

_SHAZAM!_

The deafening _cra-cra-BOOM_ of lightning cuts straight through everything else, and Billy wakes up, flat on his back in a bed he’s suddenly too tall for, his vision full of nothing but speckled popcorn ceiling.

Shit, did he…?

“Billy? Hey, hey, Billy, what happened?”

His heart is hammering against his ribs at a mile a minute, but that horrible vice grip on the back of his neck is gone, and he can _breathe,_ however shaky it might be. There are tear tracks on his cheeks, he can feel it, but that — that doesn’t feel right, not when he looks like this, not when his legs are so long that his feet are hanging off the edge of the bed. He takes in one, two, three great big gulps of air, already scrabbling for the rail at the side of his bunk, and he stammers, “Sh— Shazam.”

Another ear-splitting blast of lightning, and he tumbles off the top bunk, nearly collapsing in a heap on the floor thanks to his still shaking legs, but he manages to right himself with one hand on the side of Freddy’s mattress so that he’s at least standing.

“Hey. Hey, Billy. Look at me, man, come on, you’re freaking me out.”

Before he can say anything to that, before he can look up, before his eyes can even adjust to the dark now that the glow from his suit is gone, there’s the sound of their bedroom door being thrown open.

“Freddy? Billy?”

“You guys okay?”

Crap. Damn it. Rosa and Victor are both in the room now, and Billy’s still not totally sure he can speak at all, much less come up with the right words to convince _either_ of them that he’s even remotely okay right now.

“I, uh, I think there was a power surge?” Freddy says, coming to Billy’s rescue with a nervous laugh. “Did you guys hear it? It sure scared the crap out of us, I mean, we really gotta see an electrician or something, right? That’s not supposed to—”

“We’re, uh, we’re good,” Billy manages to say, interrupting Freddy’s rambling. “Just got… spooked, I guess.”

As soon as he looks up at them, though, he knows the lie fell flat. Rosa’s whole face changes. Where fear had been only a second ago, now some other emotion takes over, something he can’t quite place, something that’s almost like worry but _sadder._

“Oh, _Billy,”_ she says, taking a step toward him so that she’s just barely within arm’s reach. “Are you alright?”

“I, um—” he starts to say, but his voice catches. Why can’t he speak? Why are Rosa and Victor looking at him like that? Why are they—?

“You’re crying, _mi amor.”_

Oh.

Victor asks, “You okay, kiddo?”

Crap. Shit. What the hell is he supposed to say? What _can_ he say?

“Um, I just…” he tries, fails, and tries again. He can’t think of a lie that will get that look off either of their faces, so eventually he settles with, “Just a nightmare.”

Behind him, Freddy’s being totally quiet for once, not making a peep. Victor makes a face, a tight sort of smile and a nod. Rosa’s whole body slumps a bit, her face looking a little less worried and a little more sad, and for one terrifying second Billy thinks they’re about to pull him into a group hug, which he’s _really_ not sure he can handle right now, not yet, not without totally falling to pieces.

But they don’t. Instead Rosa just reaches out and combs gentle fingers through the hair that’s fallen in front of his face, and she asks, “What can we do, honey?”

What can they _do?_

“I — I don’t…” his voice trails off.

There’s only one thing he thinks he needs right now, but he’s not sure how to ask for it without telling them why, without getting into the details of the nightmare, without explaining to them what _happened_ in it. And he really, really does not want to do that. He’s still kind of banking on the hope that the details are gonna fade away with time, like dreams are _supposed_ to.

Eventually, though, he realizes he’s still too tired to come up with anything else.

His voice is annoyingly small when he asks, “Can — can I go see Darla? I know she’s asleep, but just for a second, just to…”

 _Just to make sure she’s okay,_ he doesn’t say.

Rosa and Victor, though, they seem to get it. By some miracle, they get it, and Rosa’s hand moves from his hair to his cheek, one thumb swiping some of the tears away.

“Of course you can.”

 

* * *

 

Freddy isn’t sure how long Billy’s gonna be gone, once he leaves the room.

He tries to fill up the time. He’s pretty damn sure he’s not gonna fall back asleep, not after that, but he wants to make _sure_ he won’t.

So he pulls the Batarang out from under his pillow — because he keeps it there, now, just in case, just on the off chance that some other bad guy tracks them down here and he doesn’t have time to prepare —and he sits up in the bed, turning it over in his lap, thinking.

Billy woke him up with a scream about _half a second_ before the lightning bolt hit. A nightmare, apparently, a bad one, and he definitely hadn’t meant to go full Shazam in the middle of the night and wake everybody up. And how screwed up is it that Billy can _accidentally_ transform? What kind of so-called magic can’t tell the difference between Billy intending to become Shazam and him just saying the name in his sleep?

Can that happen to Freddy, too? Or — shit, to  _Darla?_ They never really had a chance to go over how their powers work, not yet. It only happened less than a week ago and there hasn’t really been a lot of time, between school and everything. They really need to get on that, he thinks.

The Batarang’s got a knick in the side, he notices now. Just a tiny little mark in the sleek too-sharp edge, damaged from some point in the fight, not that Freddy can remember _when._  It all happened so fast.

He wonders if he can buff it out.

And _that’s_ what he’s thinking about when, after about five or ten minutes of dead quiet, the door creaks open again.

Freddy tucks the Batarang back under the pillow, watching as Billy scrubs at his face and shuffles into the bedroom. He’s alone, no Rosa or Victor to be seen anywhere, and Freddy knows that Billy must have wanted it that way. He knows Billy must have brushed off every single attempt they made at comforting him, at _parenting_ him, no matter how much it might have helped if he had just gone ahead and let them.

Billy’s working on that, and he’s getting there, a few baby steps at a time. Freddy knows that. They all know that.

“Hey, man.”

Billy doesn’t answer, not yet. But he doesn’t high-tail it up the ladder to his bunk, either, and Freddy lets himself count that as a win.

“You okay?”

He knows Rosa and Victor already asked that, like, a _million_ times, but he can’t really think of anything else to ask at first, and it’s the only thing he can bring himself to care about, anyway. And for a while Billy just keeps standing there, staring off into space and looking totally miserable.

Eventually, he closes his eyes and he nods.

 _Bullshit,_ Freddy thinks, but that would sound a little harsh if he said it out loud. Instead he asks, “Darla okay, too?”

And at that, surprisingly, Billy lets out a watery little huff and actually rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I, uh — I should’ve known she would be.”

Then, finally, he takes the two steps toward the bed and drops his butt onto the side of Freddy’s mattress. Huh. Not high-tailing it up to his bed any time soon, then. He’s still staring into space, but hey, at least he’s not standing in the middle of the room like a weirdo _while_ staring into space.

“It was just… It was stupid.”

“Not that stupid,” Freddy says with a shrug. “Nightmares suck, I know how it is.”

Billy nods, slowly, and in the dim light Freddy can see him biting his lip.

“Was it the…?” Freddy asks, and instead of saying it aloud he brings his hands to his face, fingers wiggling toward Billy like a monster’s teeth, and when Billy turns to look at him he almost laughs. Almost.

“Nah, it wasn’t them.”

Freddy nods. “Ah. So the One-Eyed Wingnut then.”

Bingo. Billy lets out a snort, shaking his head, and there’s the tiniest little upturn of his mouth when he says, “You know that’s not his name.”

“Yeah, well, if you don’t want a stupid nickname then you shouldn’t become a supervillain. I mean, that’s just common sense, y’know? Not my fault he picked the wrong side.” Freddy shrugs again. “Plus, I mean, he’s in jail now and he’s not getting out any time soon, so what the hell’s he gonna do about it? Right?”

Again Billy just nods, except this time Freddy can see him gulp, too.

“You know that, don’t you?” Freddy asks, just to be sure. “He’s not getting out? He’s not coming near any of us again?”

“Yeah,” Billy answers right away, nodding, but he’s not looking at Freddy anymore. “Yeah, obviously, I just…”

“… Forget?”

Billy lets out a sigh. “Yeah. That. Just… you know, when I’m asleep. Sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Freddy agrees, wrinkling his nose. “I get that. Same here.”

At that, Billy eyes snap right to him, all surprised and confused. “What? Really?”

“Uh, yeah?” Freddy responds, raising an eyebrow at Billy because—

For real, how was that not obvious?

“Billy — _dude,_ seriously? The guy was built like a brick _shithouse_ and… and he almost choked me out trying to get information out of me, and then he _used_ me to get to everybody else, and then he almost killed you while I was like, _right_ there, so… yeah.”

He stares down at his hands, wringing them together in his lap. Now he’s got that fluttery feeling in his chest again, his heart going too fast, because all he can think about is watching the house getting closer and closer and knowing his whole family is inside and that  _he led a supervillain there —_

He gulps that down.

“Not the kind of thing you shake off in a day, you know?” He gives half a shrug and adds, “Plus, like, come on. In what universe are those monster things  _not_ total nightmare fuel?”

When he looks up, he finds Billy looking at him like… well, like he has no clue what to say to that. Like something as simple and obvious as  _yeah, I’ve been there_ is enough to throw him totally off his game. Like empathy is uncharted territory or something.

“Seriously,” Freddy says. “You _seriously_ thought you were the only one.”

“I…” Billy trails off. “I mean, I’m—”

“— used to trucking through the hard stuff on your own, yeah,” Freddy cuts him off, because even though that’s probably not what Billy was gonna say, it might as well have been. “No shit.”

Billy opens his mouth, then closes it with a vaguely guilty look on his face.

Because after all, what’s he gonna do, _deny_ it?

Freddy lets him sit there looking like a dumbstruck idiot for a few more seconds. He almost want to like, hit him on the back of the head or something to knock some sense into him. But instead he just rolls his eyes, and he scoots forward on the bed, grabbing his stupid best-friend-brother by the shoulder and tugging him forward. Not too insistent, not being a jerk about it, so Billy can shrug him off if he wants to.

(See, Victor? He _was_ paying attention. Boundaries are important and whatever.)

Billy doesn’t shrug him off, though. Freddy gets both arms around his shoulders and he feels Billy go all tense from head to toe for a second, but then, bit by bit, he deflates. His hands link together behind Freddy’s back. He tucks his face down into Freddy’s left shoulder. He takes in a slow, shuddering breath and gives Freddy a little squeeze.

“Being a superhero is cool and all in theory,” Freddy admits, “but I guess it’s kind of the pits sometimes. It can get a little intense. All those tragic backstories and the almost dying and stuff.”

He feels Billy nod. “Yeah,” he mutters, his voice kind of muffled through Freddy’s pajama shirt. “Sorry I, uh… Sorry I got you guys dragged into it, too.”

“Dude, _you_ got dragged into it,” Freddy reminds him.

“Mmm,” he agrees. “I should’ve… stopped it there, though.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Freddy argues. “You  _couldn’t_ have. I mean, look, I know this is kind of a new concept for you, but it’s like…”

He huffs a sigh, dropping his chin onto Billy’s shoulder. How the hell is he supposed to explain it?

“It’s like… when a girl’s mean to Eugene, Mary and Darla gang up on her together, you know? And when Pedro’s all pissed off ‘cause he’s gonna fail pre-calc, Victor and Rosa stay up all night helping him study. And when Mary’s stupid boyfriend broke up with her, we all took turns throwing darts at a picture of his face with her and making up stupid rumors about him even though we knew, like,  _nothing_ about the guy. So, you know, when some weirdo wizard decides that you have to be the ‘Chosen One’ or whatever, and you have to fight some dumb supervillain and a bunch of crazy demon things and almost die trying, then — well, that just means _all_ of us have to.”

By now, he’s started rubbing Billy’s back like Victor always does when he gives hugs like this, since he’s heard Billy sniffle once or twice, and that always helps when Freddy’s not doing so hot. He figures it might help Billy, too.

“Your problems are _our_ problems. That’s just how the whole family thing goes,” he adds, all simple and matter-of-fact because — well, because it’s true. Billy just hasn’t ever been taught that. And then, because he’s definitely reached his limit on sappiness for one night, he adds, “Besides, if you thought I was gonna let you be a superhero all on your own, you’re _insane._ I can _fly,_ dude.”

Billy laughs. It’s more like a little jerk of his shoulders and a huff than a real laugh, but Freddy’ll take it.

“Seriously! We’re not just a team like Victor and Rosa are always saying we are, even though, like, _yeah,_ we’re still that kind of team, blah blah blah, whatever. But we’re also _literally_ a team of unstoppable superheroes. We could probably beat Superman in a fight if it was all of us against him. Actually, scratch that, we could _definitely_ beat him.”

“Yeah, I’ll, uh…” Billy says, finally pulling back, and he swipes at his cheeks with the ends of his sleeves. He sniffs again, but he’s sort of smiling now, at least. “I’ll be sure to tell him you said that.”

Freddy blanches at that, eyes going wide, and Billy laughs again.

“I’m kidding, dude. I don’t even actually talk to him, like, ever,” Billy admits.

“Uh, bullshit? There was whenever you convinced him to come to school, and then when he  _did_ show up and he acted like you guys were best friends, and then on Thursday when he tried to recruit all of us into—”

“Okay, yeah, sometimes he talks to me, sure,” Billy relents, and then he shakes his head. “But I mean, why would we fight Superman, anyway?”

“I dunno. Batman did.”

“Yeah, _once.”_

“Okay, look, the point wasn’t that we should fight Superman,” Freddy says, rolling his eyes, because _duh._  “My point was the whole ‘team of unstoppable superheroes’ thing, right? It’s not that we should fight Superman, it’s that we _could.”_

(Maybe. Hypothetically. He doesn’t actually want to find out, since Superman was exactly as nice as he’s always seemed on TV and then some, and Freddy doesn’t really want to fight him. But that’s not the point, either.)

“That’s a huge deal, because Superman’s basically the strongest there is,” he continues, “so if we’re even stronger than him, that means we’ve got nothing to be afraid of, you know? Nothing. Not when we’re all together.”

Okay, fine, so maybe he wasn’t quite done with the sappy stuff. Whatever, sue him. He doesn’t mind it all that much, since it finally wipes out whatever traces were still left of that miserable look Billy had had on earlier, and Freddy feels a little swell of pride at pulling off the Big Brother Pep Talk without a hitch — never mind that Billy’s technically a few months older than him. It doesn’t matter, he’s totally the big brother in this scenario.

“Yeah,” Billy says, smiling at him. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Exactly,” Freddy agrees with a shrug, like that was obvious all along, and then he reaches over to grab his phone off the nightstand and checks the time. “So we gotta be up for school in like an hour. You feel like going back to sleep?”

“Not really, no.”

“Cool, me neither.” He scoots back until he’s sitting against the headboard, his leg stretched out in front of him, the comforter pulled up over his lap, and then he gestures with an impatient tilt of his head for Billy to come join him — which he does, though not withouth a little eye roll. He climbs over Freddy and settles in with his back against the other wall, and he gets his legs under the blanket and wastes no time in jamming his _freezing cold toes_ under Freddy’s thigh. Typical.

“So do you think we could beat Wonder Woman?” Billy asks before Freddy can think to complain.

 _“What?_ Are you joking? Not a chance.”

“But you said we could beat Superman—”

“That doesn’t mean shit. You know what Supes has that Wonder Woman doesn’t? Kryptonite, Billy. Kryptonite. Also a code against using lethal force, so there’s that.”

“She’s killed people?”

“Dude, she fought in World War One! How do you not know these things? Don’t you read comics? Or Wikipedia? _Ever?”_

“Okay, okay, but like, that’s war, right?” Billy asks. “That’s different. She seems nice on TV.”

“Yeah, she seems _super_ nice — shut up, that wasn’t a pun — but I am still totally okay with never ever fighting Wonder Woman, ever.”

“What about like, a friendly wrestling match?”

“Oh yeah, I’d be down for that, sure.”

“Okay, and how about the Flash? You think I’m faster than the Flash?”

“Nah, no way. Darla might be, though.”

There’s a beat of silence after he says that, and then Billy grabs one of the pillows and smacks Freddy over the head with it.

“Ow!  _Dick!”_

“Darla is _not_ faster than me!”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i have a new son and his name is freddy freeman
> 
> come say hi on [tumblr](http://iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid.tumblr.com) and scream with me about how cute this movie was because i'm never gonna be over it


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